INVESTIGATION OF PHOTOREFRACTIVE TWO-WAVE COUPLING IN Cr-DOPED STRONTIUM BARIUM NIOBATE CRYSTAL

We present here the experimental results of photorefractive two-wave coupling in the congruent strontium barium niobate (SBN:61) crystal doped with 1000ppm Cr. Employing a He－Ne laser (632.8nm), we observed the coupling characteristics under different conditions. The crystal shows excellent photorefractive properties, with a high coupling coefficient nearly 6cm^-1 as the beam intensity ratio m is less than 100. The saturated coupling coefficient of SBN:61:Cr shows a maximum at a certain external beam crossing angle 2\theta_peak, which varies with different m, showing a nearly linear dependence on m. The saturated coupling response time \tau is measured to be less than 0.8 s. The response time decreased with increasing beam crossing angles no matter how large m is. We also observed the behaviour of the probe beam in reversed experimental procedures. We found that the probe beam shows a bistable state in both procedures.